13 is a magic number

"Magical, magical, magical!" she used to intone intensely, when she was just three, waving her hand over an empty plate before offering me some imaginary toast that she conjured there. Magical, magical, magical indeed were the months she was anticipated, the hours I danced her to sleep in the darkness of her bedroom in her first year of existance, and every single moment I've been blessed with since, watching her grow into an extraordinary, magical 13-year-old girl.

Claudia turned 13 yesterday at 1:03 p.m. cst. Her birth story is as mundane and ordinary as pretty much everyone else's birth story, except thrilling to me because Claudia was here at last, turning me into a mother. She connected me to every other millions of women that ever were mothers in that moment and yet it was a role that was so unique to me and her that we've been figuring it out together ever since. I suppose we'll continue to until she buries me someday. Magical, from her cradle to my grave.

Way back before I had a blog, when my parents were living outside Boston, MA and I was in Texas, I began emailing my parents about Baby Claudia and my mother saved all those many emails. For Claudia's birthday this year she spent hours going through them and compiling the best ones into a booklet that she sent Claudia. I have loved reading them all and remembering so many things I had completely forgotten. Like this from when she was three and had been sick:

Claudia didn't like the cup she saw me putting her juice in, so she stood next to me while I poured and screamed at the top of her lungs (her face turned really red) and stomped her feet and then she grabbed it from me, ran with it above her head into the living room and threw it across the room. Of course, we had words and I took it and put it on the kitchen counter so she ran in there and grabbed it off the counter and threw it on the kitchen floor. Also, she bit me today when I tried to put her down for a nap.